My first try – if you don’t like celery leave the leaves out as a small amount did flavour the soup. This is heavy on the leek taste as well. INGREDIENTS 3 tablespoons (42 grams) butter 5 cups (455 grams) leeks (about 4 large), roughly chopped 2 pounds (900 grams) potatoes, peeled & chopped… Read more »
Tapping Our Biggest Maple Trees – Not Sugar Maples
I am more than bored with winter and needed a garden-related activity so we decided to try our hand at making maple syrup. We’ve never tapped maples before and our sugar maple is too small. So rather than wait, we’re tapping some other maple trees. Unfortunately, our biggest sugar maple is only 7 inches in… Read more »
Restaurant Style Pad Thai
This is not meant to be purely authentic Pad Thai but rather a replica of the Pad Thai I’ve enjoyed at many taverns in Canada. It does not use tamarind since that’s not an ingredient I typically have at home but does use fish sauce & oyster sauce. I also like mine with a little… Read more »
Neapolitan Pizza Dough
We have homemade pizza cooked on the BBQ every Friday, along of course with a glass (or two) of wine. I’ve recently changed how we make pizza dough, making a roughly 70% hydration dough for Neapolitan pizza. You can hand knead, but I use my KitchenAid mixer. This is an all day dough. I start… Read more »
First Seed Starts – Greenhouse or Basement?
In past years I’ve done all my seed starts from February through May in a small setup in my basement. Now with a new greenhouse, I have room to grow, quite literally. The question is, how early will I want to turn on the heat in the greenhouse? We live in Zone 5 Ontario and… Read more »
Gluten Free Banana Coconut Cookies
This is a simple and quick healthy snack made without flour, refined sugar or eggs. If you don’t like coconut try the simpler Banana Oatmeal Cookie recipe. You can make this recipe with a fork and hand mix, or use a mixer. Ingredients: 2 ripe bananas, mashed 2 cups unsweetened coconut 1/3 cup quick oats… Read more »
Gluten Free Banana Oatmeal Cookies
Simple ingredients, no flour, no eggs, no sugar. Tasted like a banana muffin in cookie form. If you like coconut, try the Banana Coconut Cookies. You can mash the bananas with a fork and mix this entirely by hand. I used my mixer just to make things faster and easier. Ingredients: 2 ripe bananas, mashed… Read more »
Heating the Greenhouse. My First Experiments.
One of the decisions I had to make when building our Hartley greenhouse was how it would be heated. Ultimately I decided to go with electric heaters. While not as efficient as gas, I was way more comfortable with the idea of having two electric fan heaters than I was installing gas heaters. The setup… Read more »
What’s It Like To Get A Hartley Botanic Greenhouse?
Let me start off by saying I love my new Hartley Greenhouse. It’s a dream to have something this beautiful and yet, for me, functional. I still have some finishing details – brickwork which could not be completed before winter arrived and landscaping – but the main structure is up and it’s lovely. So how… Read more »
Cranberry Sauce with Orange Zest
Not too sweet and the zest gives it a nice tang. Ingredients: 8-ounce package cranberries (225g) 1/2 cups sugar minus 1 tablespoon (100g) zest one orange, chop small, about 1 teaspoon minced juice of 1/2 orange plus enough water to bring to just under one half cup (about 100ml) Instructions: Put all together in small… Read more »